


Black Is The Color Of My True Love's Hair

by Orianne (morganya)



Category: Whose Line Is It Anyway? RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-11-23
Updated: 2003-11-23
Packaged: 2017-11-02 16:24:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/371022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganya/pseuds/Orianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A late night in a Canadian bar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black Is The Color Of My True Love's Hair

It was after hours, but the bartender was either too polite or too star-struck to kick them out; they kept going up for drinks and he kept serving them. It had been a while since they'd been back to Vancouver; the show was over, and the traditional after-show party had lasted longer than usual, finally ending up downtown, fifteen minutes from the hotel.

Ryan rolled his glass between his palms, swirling the dregs of liquor. Across from him, Brad was attempting to tell Jeff about some horrible theater he and Greg had worked at by drawing the stage on a napkin. His fingers were ink-stained. Greg was leaning over Brad's shoulder, observing; Colin was nursing his vodka and half-smiling. Funny how Colin could always make his presence felt, even when he wasn't saying anything.

"It was a crackhouse version of a theater in the round," Brad said. "Remember, Greg?"

"Christ, that was bad," Greg said. "And it was outside, too. There were fuckin' cows and chickens walking up on stage."

Brad drew a tiny, thick-legged cow on the napkin, which was beginning to disintegrate under his pen strokes.

"I never worked outside before," Jeff said. "I don't like performing for bugs. There's always a spider or a bat or something."

"Bats aren't bugs," Greg pointed out. "Colin, remember that time we went up to - where the fuck was it? - and the stage, like, cracked in the middle of the gig?" Brad laughed and Greg said, "Seriously. I took a step forward and boom, the stage just split. I thought the earth was going to swallow us up. Where was it?"

Colin rubbed a finger along his jawline, the way he always did when he was thinking. "Princeton. That wasn't a good show."

"The worst," Greg said. "Maybe not the worst. One of 'em, though. That was also the night where every single word on the marquee was misspelled. It was - can I see that?" He touched Brad's arm, borrowing the pen to scrawl on his own napkin. "Chip was Epstein, I was Props, which is better than what I usually get, you were Machire or something. Made us look like we were doing impersonations of ourselves."

"At least the names on the checks were right," Colin said.

"The amounts weren't," Greg said.

"They screwed you both ways!" Jeff leaned forward, half-laughing.

"They should give you a choice," Ryan said. "'Should I fuck you on the name, or on the money? Come on. Your choice."

"At least you never did that, Ryan," Brad said. "You're the nice boss."

The table suddenly felt silent and cramped. Ryan said, "I've never been 'the boss.'"

"It's just your natural leadership quality," Greg said quickly.

"Not to mention the way you order people around," Colin said, smiling.

"They'll still serve me, right?" Greg downed the last of his beer.

"I'm guessing," Brad said. "For now."

"Works for me. Place your orders, gentlemen. While I can still remember them."

Ryan looked into his glass. He was going to be sick as a dog tomorrow, but he didn't care that much. Morning was still a long time away.

"--Come down to LA?" He came in on the end of Jeff's question to Colin; for a moment he thought it might be a proposition.

"Around 1990, maybe?" Colin said. "That's where I met Brad."

"Yep. Met him when he was still chasing the American Dream. Soon set him straight, let me tell you."

Ryan remembered meeting Brad in 1991, and, during the usual introductory small talk, Brad had mentioned working with Colin. Hearing Colin's name coming out of a stranger's mouth had shocked him. He sometimes had to remind himself that Colin had existed before him, had continued existing without him.

Greg came back from the bar, glasses foaming over and dripping. He put the booze down and wiped his hands with an expression of mild distaste. "They've got a Seeburg jukeboxes in the corner. I haven't seen one of those since I was eighteen."

Jeff turned his head. "That's the third time tonight you've mentioned that jukebox. It can't be *that* fascinating."

"I'm seven hundred years old. Little things mean a lot to me these days."

"Never thought I'd ever see you get sentimental, Proops." Brad heaved himself out of his chair. "I've got to pee. Nobody touch my drink."

"If you break the seal, you'll be pissing for the rest of the night," Jeff said. "You should hold it - wait, I need to go too. I'll come with you."

"Company. Fantastic. Anyone else want to come? Greg? Colin?"

"I think I'll wait," Colin said.

"I don't think our relationship's reached that particular level of intimacy yet," Greg said. "But you two knock yourselves out."

Jeff and Brad walked towards the men's room in tandem. Greg took a drink and asked Colin, "Have I really been talking about that fuckin' jukebox all night?"

"I think you mentioned it a couple of times."

"Fuck. I've turned into my dad. Repeating the same stories over and over. I'm gonna go play with the jukebox." He picked up his glass and walked away from the table.

Ryan looked over at Colin, who smiled loosely at him. He was slouching in his chair, slightly drunk, a little more relaxed than he usually was.

"Looks like our old stomping grounds," Ryan said. He waved a hand around, indicating the bar. "That place we used to go in Richmond. The what's its name."

"Yeah, the what's its name," Colin said. "It was the Red Wolf or the Black Bear or something."

The bar in Richmond, the name of which he'd wanted Colin to remember, had been where they used to go after the shows at Second City. It hadn't been a particularly good or even interesting bar, other than a couple of things: the beer was cheap, it had red padded barstools that could have been part of a fifties diner. It had been where Ryan discovered that the right combination of vodka, beer and some forgotten liquor with a German name could make Colin's accent change from plain Vancouver into a rolling Scottish brogue, pitch-perfect, as though he'd never lived anywhere else. That only happened once. Sometimes Ryan wished that he'd just bothered to write down what they'd drank, to replicate the exact proportions. He would have sat in his apartment with Colin and poured booze down his throat and then made him talk all night long. And Colin wouldn't have said no.

Colin knew the improv rules, never say no. Always accept, always add on. He had said yes to Ryan ten thousand times in ten thousand ways. If things hadn't changed, he would still be saying yes.

*You scare me.* That was the thought that he'd had, sitting up in his shitty apartment, staring down at Colin's face while he slept. *You scare me. You scare me.* He'd been just over thirty, still slogging it out on stage for what seemed like less than nothing, and when he imagined his life in ten years he saw himself in the same place, with Colin still there, still ready to accept anything, like a conjoined twin, the two of them sharing the same breath.

"You look drunk," he heard Colin saying.

"I don't get drunk," Ryan said. Across the bar Greg was feeding toonies into the jukebox; Ryan could hear the electronic beep of the buttons. "You know that."

"I also know that you lie," Colin said.

When Second City had offered him the chance to come down to LA, he'd been on the first train down, the Hollywood sign flashing behind his eyes in vivid neon red. He'd been alone. When he'd told Colin the news, Colin had said, "Oh, LA...great..." and he had said, feeling himself going into freefall, "Yeah. I'll go soon. Get myself an apartment, you know."

"Yourself."

"Maybe it's best that you stay here."

Colin said nothing. He sat on the edge of the bed, staring up at him, baffled and hurt, and Ryan fled.

When he'd gotten to LA, he'd gulped the air until his lungs felt singed, his breath finally belonging to just him again.

For a year afterward, he made himself not think about Vancouver or Colin or anything that came before arriving LA, just another self-made man. It wasn't that hard; all he had to do was keep looking ahead, thinking about shows and auditions and finding an apartment, until he could almost believe he had never existed before then.

When Colin showed up in LA, eighteen months after he had, he was more shocked than angry. And then he thought, *Serves me right.* Everything would catch up to him, sooner or later. He didn't try to get in contact with Colin. It had been too long, and the past didn't need any more dredging up. It was a big town, they were big boys.

He'd hear Colin's name from mutual acquaintances. Every time, he would wonder if maybe he should reconsider and give him a call, especially when he heard that Colin was struggling: trouble with Immigration, too many actors in LA, Colin too unwilling to shove himself forward. Every time, he stopped himself.

When he finally ran into Colin, it was by accident. Late night on Sunset, Ryan dragging himself home, Colin just about to get the fuck out of town, and they were right in front of each other and it was too late for them to pretend they hadn't noticed.

"Hi," Ryan said. "Didn't know you were in town. How've you been?"

Colin was a mass of nervous tics, picking at the skin between his fingers, criss-crossing his ankles together. There was a tear in the top of his right sneaker. "Fine."

"Yeah?"

"You're still with them."

"Yeah. For a little while, anyway."

"I'm leaving," Colin said. "Going home. Getting out. Something. I guess it saves you the trouble of hearing it secondhand."

*Dammit.* Ryan put out a hand, said, "Col, look, it's been a long time. Come have a beer, it's okay."

Colin recoiled away from him as though he were holding a knife. "Fuck you. You walk away, you leave me, you don't want to see me. I get messages about you like I'm some distant relative, and I'm supposed to sit down and drink with you? You...Fuck you. Fuck *you.*" His voice was strangled; angry words had never come easily for him.

"Colin -"

Colin shook his head, out of words. Ryan watched him disappear down the street.

He went back to his apartment, wishing it was two years ago and he was back in Vancouver in his apartment with peeling paint that smelled of mildew, where there was still a chance of making everything all right again.

When he got on Whose Line, he pushed Colin's name to the producers for months, figuring it was some kind of atonement. He didn't stop even when Colin got on, and didn't do well. Dan Patterson said, "Why do you keep mentioning him?"

Ryan shrugged. "He's good, that's all."

He finally got through; they brought Colin back. His first show back was with Ryan; they stood in the green room eying each other and making strained small talk before the show. It was only afterward, when Ryan was trying to change into his street clothes quickly so he could get out of there, that Colin came up to him and said, "Thank you."

"What?"

"You know. Thanks. I know you must've had to..."

"Forget it," Ryan said, pulling on his jacket. "We're professionals, right?"

"About that time in LA..."

"Forget it."

"Can't," Colin said dryly. "I said some stuff. I was broke and, well, pissed off. I thought I'd be more grownup about it, you know."

Ryan grunted.

"I'd like..." Colin started picking at the skin between his fingers. "We could be friends, if that's okay. 'Cause I'd like to come back, and I'd like not to stand around being awkward if you're here. It's not good for the show."

Ryan felt a faint pain in his shoulder, like the ghost of a severed limb. "Could give it a shot."

"Doesn't mean I want..."

"No, no, no," Ryan said. "Why'd you say yes, Col? You knew I'd show up sooner or later, right?"

"Yeah." Colin shrugged. "I guess...I guess I just knew you were sorry."

Ryan said nothing. He yanked his baseball cap over his eyes.

"Plus, I've been sleeping on my friends' couches and selling off my CDs. What am I going to live on, my pride?"

He supposed that should have been the end of it, that they should have just been two people doing their jobs, the way he was with everybody else.

He got on Drew's show. He produced Whose Line when it came to America. And through it all, there was Colin, the absolute *nearness* of him. Through it all, he could feel Colin understanding him, unobtrusively, faithfully. He'd forgotten about that, how it felt to have someone understand him. He'd forgotten Colin's instinctive grasp of what to do, what he needed, where he was going. When Whose Line filmed, it felt like he had never left home, that he was still in Vancouver, waiting to get offstage so he could take Colin back to the apartment.

After a while, when Colin left at the end of a taping weekend, Ryan started to feel as though he couldn't breathe. After a while, he could only breathe easily when Colin was with him.

He could be sitting with a group of people he'd known for years, and Colin was the only one who understood him from the inside out.

"Ryan," he heard Colin say.

Ryan finished his drink. The bartender looked like he was about to start hustling them out, clearing bottles, locking up the cash register. Brad and Jeff were back from the men's room; they were huddled around Greg, commenting on the jukebox's music selections. Ryan leaned in to Colin and said, "So, you ever consider trying again with me?"

"You are drunk."

"Yeah, so what?"

Colin sighed. "You know, if you'd asked me that ten years ago...It's just been too *long,* Ryan. We've changed."

"*You've* changed," Ryan said.

"Not really."

Ryan shook his head. Colin wasn't part of him anymore, he was part of Greg, and Brad, and Jeff, and Chip. He was at the center, letting everyone circle around him, nobody left out.

And Ryan wasn't so different than he had been at just over thirty, still running in place, just for more money; the only difference was that Colin wasn't with him to help him breathe.

The bartender cleared them out of the bar. They walked back towards the hotel, Greg walking with an arm slung around Jeff's shoulders, Brad walking backwards gracelessly, talking about something, and Colin, made exuberant by cold air and a final vodka, singing in his strange, cracked tenor, "So fare you well, my own true love, the time has passed, but I wish you well."


End file.
